This was from Gretchenfrage(a very fine contributor) on the old thread and in my view is critical to the argument.Of course,its shouted down by all the Airbus apologists but its fundamental to understanding the lethal traps that this machine can land the unwary in.Same can be said of spoiler activation on landing..you see,hear and feel the activation of this important retardation device in a conventional a/c.In Airbus,you look for it on the ECAM.

Add the deactivation of the stall warning when the a/c remained in the stall and you can see how the trap was set.But I agree this was pilot error from the moment the Captain left his 2 FO's in charge of wx avoidance at night in the ITCZ to the time that the pitots blocked and the UAS procedure wasn't followed.How very sad.How much Airbus design will figure in the final report's causal factors will depend on BEA's impartiality and integrity.I dont hold out much hope.

I was discussing AF447 with a friend of mine yesterday. He has a master of science in psychology. Reading the final crew conversation and asking me a lot of questions about flight AF447 itself, he came to this conclusion:

The crew was probably in a state of "cognitive bias". They selected and interpreted only those pieces of information, which did fulfill their own theory of what was happening. This mental state blocked all the "easy way outs" many of you described as "nose down / pitch and power". This is one step further from a simple "misinterpretation" of data. It takes a very strong signal from the outside to open up a way out of this mental state. And it takes time to realize, that the "reality" you fully believe you are in, is not the reality happening all around you. The strong signal was obviously missing and time was something, the crew did not have at the end...

A very interesting first post from Class Y. Thank you for your useful contribution.

translation:

they were confused

The 'fly in the ointment' (prefered to references to woodpiles....:)) in the Psycho's theory is that the Captain arrived on the flight deck fresh to the situation and WITHOUT the 'cognative bias' and should therefore have been able to freely analyse the situation. Otherwise, regarding the PF, spot on, but PNF?? You have two independent 'mental states' (before the third arrived) that need to be 'confused' and 'biased' I do not see evidence that PNF suffered from the same bias. The training is (should be/was in my day) to IGNORE the 'confusion' and focus on the instruments which, as far as we know, were 'telling the truth'.

Your friend does, of course, observe another issue which needs to be looked at either from the presentation of information to the crew or in training.

That is exactly what I thought and the way I objected the "bias-approach" at first. But then he (the psycho:)) told me about a series of experiments they did in the army: A commanding officer (CO) is called by his NCOs to handle a specific situation. One group of COs was told to enter the command and control center, call for an elaborate report by his NCOs and then quickly decide on the situation. The second group was told to enter the COC, and gather the required the information by having a "question-and-answer-game" and - when the CO is sure to have all the information he needs - decide quickly on the situation.

If the investigating psychologists fed erroneous information into the process, group one had a significantly higher percentage of COs who made wrong decisions because they somehow trusted the NCOs report and often did not double-check the information given to them.

Now back to AF447: the Captain arrives on the flight deck, everything has gone awry, he asks for a report, time is running fast. He was not on the flight deck when things started. He listens to the report. His training should have made him "step back and reconsider", but his mind is still trying to make sense of the report. Before he is able to come to his own conclusions, the PF (and maybe the PNF) overwhelm him with more (erroneous) information. It may have been very easy to slip into the same "reality" as the PF (and the PNF). Once in, there is no easy way out...

But you are right BOAC: the "man-machine interface" and the specific training should be examined very closely.

The steady state in this cockpit is data/solution. Normally, it functions quite well, but as we see, it can rapidly degrade into chaos. The pilots are TRAINED to this model, and thinking is discouraged, actively, in favor of memory (rote), and reference (QRH).

To expect pilots to function to one model for virtually their entire career in flying, yet retain a facile thought process when data is missing, is preposterous. As we see, it can be deadly.

With all respect, there are ample exhibits of this regime on thread. Looking for the solution immediately, disregarding evidence that doesn't sustain one's bias, is clear, here.

Then, when there is "consensus" actively defeating any challenge to the dogma? Is that not what the "psycho" describes? Solution Bias.

Speed over quality. Activity before decision. These are deadly artifacts of a philosophy that actively discourages using one's head.

The deadliest symptom of rote behaviour is how quickly and terminally it defeats success, when it is interrupted. "Start over".

It is called a "train of thought", for a very good reason, and when derailed, there is no further chance for rescue.

May as well call for the tug. In mid-Ocean, that is obviously not possible.

The discussion goes in a very interesting direction and I see plently to learn from. One has to consider that not only the stalled aircraft was difficult to recover, but also the crew's state of mind. The closer they came to impact, the more difficult it was to get out of this funnel, this narrowing tunnel.

Like in most accidents, it would have been easiest to escape the spiral (literally and metaphorically) at the beginning (just keep pitch, wings level and thrust), and the more away from the fair way they got, the more difficult it became to save the plane and her inhabitants.

When the captain came to the cockpit, it was already impossible, aerodynamically and CRM-wise.

Sounds like 'brain freeze'. Difficult not to suspect an ingrained belief that the a/c 'couldn't stall' prevent proper root cause analysis.

The first step in solving a problem is the acquisition of the correct information.

It's no good giving the "right" answer to the "wrong" problem.

I think Lyman has some good points in his last post.

Generalising, much of pilot training is procedural these days (the "training" mindset) rather than original thought (the creative mindset).

The former works well when things are normal but breaks down when things become very abnormal.

Why is it 'a given' to some posters that the 'stall' was unrecoverable, yet to another group of posters it is 'a given' that all that was required for recovery was an actual nose down SS input of some magnitude & duration? :confused:

OK - the answer is that we are in uncharted aerodynamic territory and thus don't know, and subjectivity rules. Even given that, I cannot understand Dani's "When the captain came to the cockpit, it was already impossible, aerodynamically and CRM-wise." since the a/c was above 35k - over 3 mins from impact..

The thing about 'cognative bias' is that it is very similar to instrument disorientation exercises - the teaching is to trust the instruments and IGNORE the 'bias'. Here, of course, the big unknown is what the instruments were telling.

BOAC. Yes. In this case, the instrumentation is not known. Dani (perhaps by mistake) condemns the plane to doom with seven miles to recover. Earlier I said recovery was possible much lower, and you called me a fool.

This was a hybrid Stall, the aircraft had tantalizingly good horizontal speed, and was perhaps close to re loading the wings, (more than just "partially"), but the Descent promised a long carefully controlled pull up to effect the solution.

Who knows what velocity was in store, but when the goose is fully cooked anyway.........

You emphasize instruments, but others adamantly demand Pitch and Power.

You may be confusing "conclusion bias" with Solution bias. The crew here were fully stuck on conclusions, and weren't even close to a solution. It is hard to be patient when you are about to die. Training crews to "Operate the machine".....Wait, let me be precise...."Drive the Machine", to the exclusion of ad hoc and intuitive mind power is (will always) cause tragedies.

After stalling, the angle of attack stayed above 35 degrees so was it really "close to re loading the wings" ?

Lyman:

I have read all reported BEA information regarding this tragic accident and have come to the understanding (rightly or wrongly) that the only erroneous indication on the PF's instruments was the Air Speed with all other indications including altitude, pitch angle, roll angle, engine thrusts, heading, etc., all reading correctly. It is also my understanding that the PF predominantly held the a/c in a nose-up attitude manually using the Side Stick while the a/c was both flying and stalled.

When I read your posts I gain the understanding that it is your belief that pitch angle and altitude along with several other indications were all in error thus denying the PF the opportunity to safely fly the a/c by reference to the instruments.

Please explain to me where you have gained your information regarding any faulty indications other than to the Air Speed as I am unable to ascertain from where you have gained this understanding and thus am finding it difficult to agree with you views?

AH yes - human factors. I'm not a pilot but have a fair degree of experience in human factors (including the army - for which I will comment on)

Everyone has cognitive bias. It is what enables you to make a decision to cross a road or buy a pie. Mentally we prioritise inputs (not information, which is processed data) and select. Its not in itself a problem unless the parameters get squeezed, such as the need to achieve a goal against the lethality of getting it wrong. If I want to cross a road I am usually going to wait until the traffic has a gap long enough to cross safely. If my wife is being attacked on the other side of the street I may change my parameters rather drastically, and run in front of traffic I wouldnt have done if the need wasnt so pressing. That is not to say that cognitive bias isnt powerful- some people adhere to concepts way beyond dispassionate argument. I just dont think that to label a situation as "cognitive bias" gets anywhere near the state of mind of the flight crew.

I suspect that the complexity of the pressures of cognitive input squeezed by the absolute need to keep the aircraft flying makes the description of "cognitive bias" a little stretched.

I also feel that some physical effects would affect the crew. I imagine that the aircraft was being bounced around a bit, with its corresponding effect upon mental processes irrespective of bias. If I cannot see clearly an instrument because I am being shaken around I will be slower to assimilate the data and process it.

The example of the army briefing had its own bias. Essentially it had little to do with psychology but to information flow - any senior commander could reach a better decision if he had the time or resources to question a source of data. To rely on a single direction of a stream of information (ie a NCO briefing to a CO) is always going to be less effective than being able to engage in a two way exchange of information.

Because it was the very exact moment they stalled, at time 12:11:45, when the captain entered the cockpit.

"impossible" is maybe a bit to stark, I should have said "most probably". It's not only about "would it be theoretically possible" but "could they have find it out that they were stalled" and thus recover. If they knew for sure that they were stalled, it might have been possible of course. Probable, but unlikely.

I agree on uncharted aerodynamic territory (for an A330).
On the subjectivity:
- many of the people putting forward that the stall was unrecoverable may have an agenda (i.e. "defending" the pilots, cf AF unions)
- many of the people putting forward that the stall was recoverable may have an agenda (i.e. "defending" the plane)

Known facts :
- some planes (particularly T-tail designs) may encounter a "deep" stall; as the definition of a "deep stall" isn't the same for everybody, let's describe it as a stall-in-which-you-cannot-unstall-the-aircraft-by-pushing-on-your-pitch-control-because-your-elevators-don't-have-any-authority-anymore.
- it is not proven (and, in my opinion, it is unlikely) that the A330 is prone to this kind of stall.
- sims tests cannot be representative (why? because uncharted aerodynamic territory = sim emulates, not simulates accurately)
- AF447 proved that pushing the stick and/or reducing thrust => less AoA, even on a stalled A330, cf FDR traces; it did not prove that the stall was (or wasn't) recoverable, because no sustained attempt was made.

+1

Huh?:confused:
The aircraft stalled around 02:11:10 as shown by:
- negative V/S
- AoA > 15°
The captain entered the cockpit at 02:11:42, that's ~30 seconds later.

- I am just not understanding your posts right now. Recovery, in my opinion, could have been 'definite and likely'. To suggest otherwise is to imply that the elevators could not lower the nose, and heaven knows where that will take yet another 447 thread.

I still have two basic things I do not understand

1) Why the aircraft climbed/was climbed

2) Why not one of the three pilots was able to recognise nose high/huge rate of descent for the fact that it just was not 'flying'. I will give the crew the benefit of the doubt that if they had recognised it they would have taken the correct recovery action although the cock-eyed stall warning logic would not help.

1) is for the investigators

2) is for the training system - teaching crews they still need to be able to fly, to ignore bizarre and misleading audio messages and that the a/c will not protect them regardless.

Once STALL occurred, the flight becomes conjectural.


AV Flyer. The part of the upset and LOC that is important has to do with what the PF saw, determined, and did post a/p drop, prior to STALL.

You have DFDR data, Period. You do NOT know what the PF saw, He certainly had no access to the recorded data, and his screen was NOT recorded. This is where you demand I explain why he did not give over control. I have, you missed it, and move on.

You have avoided any possibility of doubt re: the Crash? Not even BEA have a conclusion, nor do they have data that eliminates doubt, and if they do, they have not released it.

I am done re-explaining that you and others are ignorantly blind to possibilities, that you have eaten the fruit of bias, and you need to have a dead crew so singularly stupid that nothing like it could ever happen again. Dream on.

BEA is bluffing, and you are too soft headed to call, you lose the pot.

BOAC, even if they had all instruments available, I hardly doubt that they could have recovered, considering that they were in a "deep stall" (we don't know if they were). There are several instances of stall incidents that make me vary (KAL 747 near SFO, unconfirmed "test flights" described in this forum)

Without the instruments, I really wouldn't want to find out how a recovery works: When you push your nose down, when do you start to recover? If you pull too early, you stay stalled, if you pull too late, you end up in real overspeed. Rememember they didn't have airspeed all the time.

well... it truly sounds amazing that THREE people did not recognize a stalled situation for minutes. with a massive descend rate , simultanous high pitch and lack of airspeed it should be clear for every pilot what is happening. airbus is to blame that it did not firmly and continiously informed the pilots that they are in a stall.

so in the first moment we all could think we would made better, the aircraft from that high altitude surely was recoverable from a technical point ov view.

on the other hand it is always easy to discuss NOT being in an direct life danger. they were at night conditions, thunderthorms in the area, turbulence , no visual horizon reference, erratic airdata informations, and they panicked in a situation they never saw before.

all in all it nevertheless seems to be an massive pilots error- they could be able to keep out of the stall or recover one .

Dani - I think it is probably a language issue that is causing a little confusion here. I assume you mean "I really doubt that they could have recovered,"? Otherwise the sentence does not make sense. I would also dispute the words 'deep stall' - they were 'fully stalled', and in all probability NOT in a 'deep stall'.

Regarding recovery - yes - it would not be easy, and is not trained, but remember IAS indications returned fairly quickly..

Are you absolutely certain the A330 would allow the pilots enough G to recover the dive?

(my bold)

Some good objectivity.

AZR:

Is there any advantage to exposing crews to an A330 'full' stall in a Level D simulator at this time?

Or maybe more correctly put, is there any disadvantage to doing this?

Or should this be put off until the final report is made available or possibly not done at all?

I truly cannot believe the bulls*hit I'm reading here.

Dani said,

Yes we do know. This aircraft was NOT susceptible to a deep stall. A deep stall affects aircraft with a T-tail, with a horizontal stabilizer capable of being aerodynamically 'blanked off' by separated air from a stalled wing. That is, Sea Vixen, B727, HS Trident.

The modern Airbus and Boeing aircraft are NOT prone to deep stall.

A deep stall is a stall which is unrecoverable except with the deployment of a tail-chute. This stall was induced by the pilot pulling the nose up into and beyond 'coffin corner', and then wilfully holding it there as though wishing to commit suicide.

On 18th June 1972, G-ARPI entered a (real) deep stall departing LHR. I recall hearing that a pitch down of -60 degrees would have been required to recover the aircraft, but the horizontal stabilizer was blanked off and didn't work! THAT is a deep stall.

This aircraft could have been recovered with an even half-qualified pilot at the controls.

I know, I know, it's hard to criticize departed colleagues, but any dispassionate observer must ask why this guy yanked the stick hard back when he experienced an ASI failure. Even if you're in a panic - a total funk, maxed-out (been there) - it is not logical or sensible.

But please, can we stop talking about 'deep stalls'?

This stall was caused by the PF, and maintained by the PF all the way down to MSL.

Well, there you have it.

No more questions, sir. :ugh:

At last! Someone - other than me - has spelled it out loud and clear.

Ross Detwiler has an article in the October copy of B&CA titled "Dome of Confusion". Excerpt.
His comment on 447

Trapped again.

Please don't misinterpret my poorly phrased post that got stuck in there between AD & LR. It was only a comment on AD's tidy summation.

There's a lot of loud, but not a lot of clear.

I think AD's post is somewhat presumptuous when it comes to this aircraft's aero characteristics.

We (he) know(s), I don't.

Deep-Stall-able?
 

Here's a document prepared jointly by Boeing and AB in the late nineties (!) on general upset recovery. (It's a sticky on this site.) The argument above is addressed, though not definitively.

Aerodynamic Principles of Large-Airplane Upsets
Beg all of your pardons if this has already been linked in this thread.

Certainly begs the question: when was upset recovery training started? And then.....when was it stopped/reduced?

The battle between our 'DNA of flying' and machine management
 

This is my first post on this AF447 thread and one of the few I’ve made on PPRuNe. I am a private pilot with around 700 hours collected intermittently over a 25 year period. My experience is all single engine by day from C152 through to C210, Mooney 201, Piper Comanche with an aero endorsement, tail wheel and floating hull. My only air transport experience has been as SLF (on many business trips all over the world) and as an SLF that managed to talk my way into many cockpits to ride on the check /observers seat (in the glory days pre 9/11) so I am grossly unknowledgeable about the world of the commercial cockpit and the complex aircraft many of you here fly. The most amazing and wonderful flying I’ve done by far has been in a Lake Renegade amphibian. This go anywhere machine (for me) is the ultimate freedom aircraft and blends aviation and marine skills in a unique fashion that brings a whole other dimension to flying. If you’ve never experienced the wonder of a flying boat and all the amazing places you can go with one, you can’t begin to comprehend what it’s like.

Likewise, I can’t begin to comprehend the tragedy and chaos of the final moments of these pilots’ lives. I’ve read this entire thread from the beginning and would like to thank all the contributors for bringing a dozen salient points to the table. There’s much passion on display, much insight into what might have happened and much disbelief that this crew flew this aircraft into a stall and had no comprehension that that’s what they’d done and stalled it all the way down to the sea at 10,000 feet per minute. What’s been mentioned here, but perhaps not entirely clearly articulated, is the fundamental glaringly obvious issue with the Airbus’ FBW system’s entirely different approach to the control of an aircraft against the backdrop of everything most commercial fixed wing aircraft have been up to this point.

Does anyone remember those early computer video games from the late 70s/early 80s where you had a space ship that had to shoot other objects on the screen and you had to ‘”steer” the craft using keyboard arrows (or a joystick if you had a really swish setup)? I think it might have been called Spacewars. The “space ship” was represented as an arrow on the screen and you could rotate it through 360 degrees, and move around by using positive or negative thrust. It took some time to get used to how to move it because every control input required a counteractive input to stop the movement that was started (i.e. rotate to left required some rotate to right counteraction to stop the rotation. Move forward required some ‘reverse thrust’ to counter and stop the movement. Thrust movement plus rotation resulted in strange oversteer or understeer which could see you careering out of control). In fact the entire control of the spaceship was in effect what one might consider would truly happen out in space where Newton’s 3rd law is perfectly on display and not hampered by other things such as airflow. It took considerable time to conquer the techniques to move around and the ‘no gravity, no friction’ movement of the space craft was almost impossible for some people to get their minds around.

Now, all professional pilots, A & B drivers, please feel free to shoot my observations down in flames, but if the side stick of an Airbus behaves (sometimes, always or only occasionally such as perhaps when the aircraft is fully stalled) in a manner not dissimilar or even a little bit like the old video game I’ve mentioned above (i.e. the pilot makes an input such as ‘stick fully back’ and a substantial forward stick counteracting input is required to negate the state that the first input leaves the aircraft in) then this is just the most fundamentally different flying quality to virtually every other fixed wing aircraft, be it a large commercial jet or the tiniest recreational micro-lite. The many posts in this thread that are indicating the AB’s computers are recognising pilot input much like a ‘request’ for a certain pitch angle or for a certain G loading takes the manner in which an aircraft is controlled into an entirely different realm which would require a wholly different mode of thinking (no news here….but hear me out for a moment). In fact, the simple stick-position/attitude/power concepts we’ve all learned and are the currency of basic flying skills are not relevant for the skills required to fly an AB (if this concept of the operation of the control stick being so completely different is actually how it is).

My point is that EVERYTHING we have ever learned about how a fixed wing aircraft flies and the use of the control wheel/stick throughout all phases of flight, our ‘DNA of flying’ if you will, is embedded and inculcated into our ‘flying thinking’, our skill-sets, our survival instincts, our love of flight and our automatic reactions. Our ability to spatially conceptualise ourselves in space and time and to extend our bodies to the control surfaces of an aircraft is all tied to our first few experiences of flying. Just like taking our first few steps as a toddler, riding a bicycle as a youngster, learning to hit a ball with a bat or racquet, taking to the wheel of a car, those first few lessons when we started flying have gone into the subconscious and the feelings, sensations and sounds have formed an unchangeable and immovable level of ‘knowing’ about how to fly. For anyone that learned in a Cessna 152 or 172, who could forget those early experiences of stalling? The sound of the wind howling and ‘wailing’ through the vents up near the corners of the windscreen as your instructor encouraged you to keep holding the control wheel right back and keep it straight with rudder whilst waiting for the buffet and nose drop? The feeling and sensation of the aircraft struggling to fly and its nose drop demonstrating it was effectively ‘giving up’ is something you don’t forget as you ease off holding the control wheel back and add power (whilst, as a new student, frantically using rudder to prevent a wing drop) with your instructor either admonishing your good handling or castigating you for losing hundreds of feet!

And it’s this ‘DNA of flying’ that is most likely in a battle with the analysis/machine-interpretation skills that appear to be all important when flying these FBW airliners that are, in effect, very complicated computers with a whole raft of rules and ‘laws’ that keep the machines safe for 99% of the time but expose the operators to a baffling and overly complex environment for that 1% of time when conditions and malfunction take them outside the norm.


These AF447 pilots (and I would hazard to guess a substantial number of current AB drivers) can’t possibly have been trained well enough to deal with the conditions they found themselves in that night (dark, IMC, turbulence), the complexities of the flight data systems being compromised by the pitot malfunction and responses of the aircraft to the extremity of the a/p & auto throttle disconnect. It’s just so easy to blame them and say things “like the PF held the nose up at 35 degrees all the way down! Who would do such a stupid thing…!?” I would reckon many ‘would do’ the same (and the PF in fact may not have ‘held’ the stick back anyway) as there was clearly way too much complexity, way too many possibilities of the AB’s system’s reporting incorrect situation (and them needing to consider that simplistic conclusions are likely to be wrong because of the system’s compromise) and they had to deal with potentially just the most basic of fundamental conflict between their ‘DNA of flying’ knowing and the ‘laws’ and rules that the Airbus 330 had been keeping them safe with and then suddenly dropped them outside of the cocoon to fend for themselves.

I think we owe it to the memory of these guys to be aware that the situation they ended up in was just so confusing, so hopeless and so desperate, their loss (and our ability to know something of what happened) is likely to be the start of a major initiative to deal with the need to bridge this great divide between the art of flying (as it has been for the first 90 or so years) and this relatively new world of machine management that requires so much more knowledge and ability to get into the mind of the designer/programmer in order be ahead of it and not come unstuck.

Unfortunately this is the world we’re all moving into more and more. Technology is creating wonderful benefits for ordinary people where the users of the technology don’t need to understand the underlying operatives. And business leaders see great efficiency and profitability in building complex machines where technology that’s getting closer and closer to the goal of artificial intelligence keeps us safe and ‘inside the envelop’. The problem is that as this technology takes more and more hold, generations of users, proponents and ‘visionaries’ start to misunderstand man’s need to still be one step ahead of it and maintain the skills and knowledge to take back control when the technology fails (as it inevitably does because it’s just a reflection of our human condition).

I hope post has made sense; sorry for it being so long winded . I’m less than thrilled about travelling in these complex machines as I can see that this is about man-machine interface psychology, economics, politics and big business needing to come clean and invest more dollars into research and training rather than just about this particular crew's lack of ability, perceived or otherwise.

Renegade man - good post, however I do feel it's a bit of an airbus bashing. You have to remember that even though the airbus has loads of protections, the control surfaces still work in a normal sense. Stick forward, nose goes down. Stick back, nose comes up. There is no need to put in opposit control to stop or control the movement either, the aircraft just trims for you, so you can set the exact attitude you want then release the stick. So the stall recovery is still the same as for a light aircraft, with the exception that you may actually have to reduce thrust to remove the pitch power couple. I hope that helps you understand the airbus a bit more.

BOAC, language critic well accepted.

Stall: Yes, the pitot got ice-free quickly, but did they know? They couldn't trust their instruments anymore. How could they know that speed is indicating correctly, once they remained around and below 60kts? It's a very disturbing indication. The likelihood that they are wrong is bigger, if you find yourself in this situation. Because it is not possible that you are in the air and indications show zero. Even vertical speed (-10000 fpm) they did not trust, and I can understand that they didn't.

I stand with my initial statement: After they inadvertently stalled the plane, their chances of recovering was very low. The only chance would have been to push down, check GPS speed, then pull. (G load should not be a problem as long as speed is in a normal range). I'm pretty sure we will be presented with some kind of data about how it is possible (BEA final report?).

That's also why Airbus training guidelines now concentrate on Unreliable Speed and stall recognition, not on stall recovery. It's much more important not to get into stall than to get out of it.

Hi OK465,

I'm not qualified to answer that.
As far as personal opinions go, I cannot see why it would be a disadvantage to do this (from a flying skills point of view).
But there are not so many Level D simulators, perhaps they are better used at something else (that they do accurately). If the goal is to train crews to push stick & decrease thrust, a more simple sim/trainer may be enough... and cheaper, pending the final report & recommendations.

Very informative thread.

I think the psychological key might be the PNF's statement at 2:10:17 "we've lost the the speeds..." which implies he thinks the failure is more than one, and communicates that to the PF. With such extreme values when they are all working its easy to understand why they might be sceptical of what they were reading. Unfortunately we will never know for sure because we don't know what the PF was seeing.

Also at 2:10:22 the PNF just says "Alternate law protections" to the PF without specifying which. This seems a recipe for pilot confusion, particularly in such a stressful situation when the ECAM hasn't said why the ap has disconnected and control switched to alt2. Again psychologically, if you have different states, far better to have different names for them to avoid exactly this sort of potential misunderstanding which is the last thing you need in a time critical environment.

For those that keep going on about the requirement for force feedback because nothing is apparent to the pilot when the sidestick is moved, have you flown the type? I doubt it because to achieve the 15 degrees nose up that the Pf achieved requires a SUBSTANTIAL and CONSTANT back stick and the FORCE required to do so SIGNIFICANT! It is NOT just a little blip on the sidestick that you would NOT know you were applying.

worrier

The fact you have lost the speeds does NOT mean you will fall out of the sky just hold the attitude, that is why we have a big Primary Flight Display. The ECAM does not need to tell you why the AP has disconnected as it is apparent due to loss of airspeed indications and the PFD will show some of the protections that are NOT available. So all the PF has to do is hold the attitude through any turbulence until the PM can run the ECAM and before you know it the speeds recover.

LYMAN

You are clutching at straws with You are trying to say that the PF's PFD was not available to him because it is not on the DFDR. Well you are actually saying that the PF is incompetent as he was trying to fly the aircraft without a PFD, when he should have handed over control immediately if that was the case.

RenegadeMan
Wrong I am afraid as the Instrument rating is designed for flight in the dark or heaven forbid IMC! The A/C was NOT at any "extremity" when the AP and A/THR disconnected they were virtually STRAIGHT and LEVEL, one of the first things we were taught as PILOTS!

I will say again that once they were in the stall they were then poorly placed to recognise and recover, confusion reigned, HOWEVER they should NOT have been in that situation in the first place. If the stall warning had been programmed to keep operating below 60 kts I doubt it would have helped them as they did not "hear" it, in the zoom climb, when it would have saved them, so I doubt they would have "heard" it in the actual stall!
As an aside, why on earth would any designer / regulator of a transport category aircraft, never mind the pilot, expect an aircraft of that size to get below 60kts in flight, without a stall recovery being attempted a long time before is beyond me!

Won't be beyond anybody any more...

A lot of your argument, iceman, relies of pilots being competent "stick and rudder" pilots. Can't you see that that is rapidly becoming not the case any more?

As for the two FOs, I wonder if the chap in the left hand seat ever did much hand flying from that seat. With the captain, the FOs would always "fly" from the RHS. The two FOs would probably only ever be together with the AP engaged. Here we have the aeroplane out of control, with one crewmember not sitting in his normal "poling" seat and the other not being able to work out what was going on, or at least recover. A setup for a stuffup, me thinks.

Training
 

Is this a case of limited stick and rudder skills or a failure to read and interpret instruments.

Knowledge base ?

Skill base?

or

Error base ?

It makes a difference in how we train to prevent a repeat of this accident